Maybe it is because of COVID, but I was feeling a little doom and gloom when I started researching. My first topic was flood myths. Many areas have a flood myth, from the famous Gilgamesh and Noah to the less well known stories passed down in indigenous cultures. I know about some of the flood myths and am interested in several of the indigenous stories I have not heard. It might be interesting to tell a flood story from the perspective of someone in an area that did not flood. What would that person think about these people showing up telling all these crazy sounding stories of deep water and homes washed away?
My second topic idea was literally the end of the world. (Thanks, COVID.) As far as mythology about this is concerned, I do have some knowledge. Many of my ideas and thoughts are may be influenced by popular media. I probably have a lot of ideas on how to retell stories under this topic because there are just so many ways a civilization could end. And I haven't even pulled in thoughts from basically modern myth/legend/stories like the 2012 apocalypse that didn't happen. Also in writing this type of story you would have to consider whether or not to update the timeline. If you push things into the modern era, it would be easy for folks somewhere like Pompeii or Atlantis (Santorini?) to pull out their cell phones and call a relative and say they need a place to stay. Technology could change so many things!
The third idea I came up with after getting stuck on Wikipedia was resurrection. A lot of the western world, myself included, will be familiar with this type of story from the Bible and Jesus's resurrection. This story is also present in other mythologies to some extent with gods like Osiris and Dumuzid/Tammuz. I've noticed a lot of these stories have male gods dying. Then women, often wives or followers, have to go find them, go on a quest or weep for them so they'll come back. What would happen if the women just didn't bother? Or what would happen if it was the women who died and the men forgot to go through the proper procedures to resurrect everyone?
Finally I started researching werewolves and vampires. This is really big, branching topic and if I go this route I will probably need to pick one or the other instead of both. Or concentrate only folklore from a specific area. I know a fair bit about some of the folklore but it is also really varied depending on what region and time frame you are looking at. Despite having a lot to work with, I may actually have the fewest ideas on how to rewrite or retell anything here. It may be because it seems like there are so many of these stories that have already been told! It seems like you could switch some things around still, perhaps have a setting in which vampires and werewolves are the majority population and scared of 'normal humans' who are usually in hiding. That's something I'll have to think about and this may not be a topic I end up picking because of my lack of ideas
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